African american women dating european men

” After nearly 22 years in the United States, I’ve come to attach this question with some mild form of anxiety.

If I respond with “New Jersey” they refuse and say, “No, where are you REALLY from.” If I say “I’m Ghanaian,” they say, “Oh when did you move to the U.

S.,” which of course, I then have to respond by saying, “No, I was born in New Hampshire and spent my formative years in New Jersey.” In order to avoid confusion, I’ve settled on the response, “I grew up in New Jersey, but both my parents are from Ghana,” and that usually seems to do the trick.

I discovered that I love cooking for friends and trying new foods. I love taking walks near the beach so that I’m close enough to hear the waves crash on the shore, but far enough to avoid the crowds of people. Being in England completely changed the way I think about how I see myself.

I have a horrible sweet tooth and hate English Froot Loops because they’re not nearly as sweet or colorful as the American ones. It wasn’t until I left England and traveled further east in Europe that I began to think more about how others see me.

In England I felt that I was able to build what it mean to be a Black woman.

In Switzerland, I was able to show others what it meant to be a Black woman.I pushed myself to try new things just for the sake of trying them.For the first time in my life, I was able to explore the different parts of what make me, me.For 21 years, I had grown up in a country where saying that I was from that country wasn’t enough.I was raised in a country with systems in place to make people like me feel like second class citizens, where people like me were reminded daily that we were in someone else’s home, where people like me were told to “go back to where you came from”. My initial goal for studying abroad was to find myself.In Switzerland, Black people are almost like mythical creatures, like a unicorn or leprechaun, where you only ever read about them or maybe saw one in a music video, but never in real life. Spanish people are familiar with Black women, they may even see them often, but often times, the only ones they ever see are sex workers.